*Note: As I am an adult, this blog may contain content inappropriate for children*

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Transformational or tragic: you choose

I do not have a favorite Season. Whatever time of year I am in right now is my favorite time of year. This goes even for the infamously 'damp and dreary' Pacific Northwest winters. Right now, Autumn is scampering through the Willamette Valley. Her touch, though chill, brings blush to the trees and bushes. Scarlets, rich golds and oranges, the thousand shades of green fading to brown. And for all I love the colour of the foliage, there is something else that grabs my attention. Grasses. Ornamental grasses. They are producing their tassels now, their heads swaying and dancing with bits of fluff and silk, their sharp leaves rustling in the breeze. Their movement is hypnotic for me. I spent part of my Friday lunch break laying on the grass near a clump of zebra grass, eating an ice cream bar, enjoying the feel of the sun on my skin, the scent of fungal mats growing, and the soughing sound of the wind in the grass. And as always, in moments of solitude and silence, when the monkey brain is happily resting, thoughts and sensations blended in a swell from the unconscious, and my mind rocked gently with a question to contemplate: Two people can experience the same event. For one it is an instrument of tragedy and destruction, for the other, it is a tool of growth and transformation. What is the key to experiencing something as transformational instead of tragic?

I recognize that this is a satellite concern of the question of suffering that has preoccupied me during the past year. There is no doubt that my sister's horrific illness and my own agony over her suffering and my helplessness in the face of it have transformed me, just as the deaths of four loved ones in five years did. The weight of these experiences of loss of and pain--they can be crushing. My therapist assures me that they do crush some people, that some people never recover from tragedy. But it seems to me that one person's tragedy is another person's catalyst, and the difference between the two is subjective, experiential. Something within a person, some quality or characteristic, then, must be the key to determining if an experience will be transformational or tragic. What is it?

I have a friend whose life parallels mine more closely than anyone I know, and yet, our approaches to life are so very different. We've had similar experiences of adversity early in life. We are both the eldest children: she the eldest of two girls, me the eldest of three, and then later, of five, girls. We both raised our siblings. By the time we were teens, we'd both experienced abuse, neglect, loss, rape. We are both highly intelligent: we went to Ivy League colleges, read voraciously, enjoy intellectual pursuits. But there are differences. She had her mother, I did not. I had my father, she did not. While my father was physically, mentally, and emotionally abusive, he is not the one who sexually abused me. Her step-father did. She is stunningly gorgeous. I am not. She is extremely extroverted. I am not. She is attention-seeking, I am attention-aversive. Neither of us has married, neither of us has children, but she wants both, and I do not. With the exception of one, all of my partners have been good to me, but her relationships are invariably abusive. At present we are both single/unpartnered. I am happily, deliberately so, and she is not. I am growing, changing, evolving. She is not. Or atleast, not in a positive way. She is stuck. She is 'stuck', and everything she experiences that is unpleasant is something that 'happens' to her. She does not take ownership of her thoughts or actions, she does not examine cause and effect--she is the victim of circumstances of her own creation and she won't accept that. Something in her is inflexible, resistent. She cannot accept that she has the power to influence and create her life. Why does she --and so many others-- insist on being a victim?

I am a doer, a fixer, a very capable, get 'er done person. I am confident in my ability to do anything I want to do, and do it well. And yet, in the past year, I've had to face the awful truth that sometimes I just have to accept what comes, to rely on my ability to handle what comes my way, and let it come, let it flow over and through me, teach me, change me--and rather than let the pain of it cling to me, becoming something tragic--I let it go. Why is it some of us can do this, and others cannot?

Marcus Aurelius once said: "And as for me, let what will, come. I can receive no damage from it, unless I think it a calamity; and it is in my power to think it none, if I so decide." Powerful words, words that emphasize what I have learned since the dawn of the new millenium: that my thoughts and attitudes are causal, creative forces in my life. Calamity or Catalyst--it is in my power to choose which it will be. We all have the power to choose which it will be. At every crux, since earliest childhood, I have chosen the path of transformation. I have taken life's body-blows and continued humping along, limping sometimes, crawling other times, and yet invariably, after a short period of recovery, I am skipping, whirling, dancing along my path. Happy. Peaceful. Contented. Despite the pain of living. Why?

Am I shallow? Is that it? Is it that nothing I experience touches me so deeply that I feel intense, debilitating pain? No. The answers are 'no'. I know pain intimately. I know agony and sorrow and loss. I have endured what others consider unendurable, and yet I live. I live, and what is more, I thrive. How? Why? What is the key to transformation instead of tragedy?

After thinking on all this, after pushing it down into my unconscious and letting it percolate back up through my conscious mind, I think... I've come to think it is a quality of mind or character or self (whatever you want to call it) that can be identified by the following overlapping, inclusive labels: adaptability, bouyancy, flexibility, mutability, pliancy, resilience.

Since thoughts and attitudes are causal, creative forces in our lives, people who meet life with a flexible mindset are more likely to respond to what is really going on, in ways that are appropriate to the situation, and thus they more likely to craft something positive from their experiences. Resilient people are more likely to adapt to change, to bounce back after adversity--like a leaf of grass or a bamboo pole does once the pressure is released. Flexible, bouyant people 'know' that they will not only survive a 'negative' experience, but will thrive. Adaptable, pliant people 'know' that who we are is not static and thus breakable, but rather, that we are 'becoming' and thus resilient. And so, I suppose that, at base, its not what happens to us that matters--no matter how intensely painful or uncomfortable. What really matters is the attitude that we meet our experiences with, how those attitudes affect our responses, and the meanings that we give those experiences. How we feel, think and act is what determines if our lives are heavenly or hellish, tragic or transforming.

And so I suppose the answer to the question "What is the key to experiencing something as transformational instead of tragic?" is: a resilient, bouyant spirit. What makes someone resilient, bouyant, adaptable? How does one become those things? -- Those are new questions that I would love the answers to.

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About Me

Silken's perspective on sensuality is as unique as her erotica is delightfully arousing. She chose to go "public" with her erotic material because she hopes to awaken more people to the sensual immediacy of life with the goal of enriching their sexual relationships with themselves and their partners.

*Note: All content of this weblog--except where attributed--is original, and copyright is held by me*

QUOTES MEANINGFUL TO ME

I walk, and I notice. I am sensual in order to be spiritual. I look into everything without cutting into anything. --Winter hours, p100 (Mary Oliver)

The spiritualization of sexuality is called love. It is a great triumph over Christianity. --(Nietzche)

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as a poem. No why or wherefore, no direction, no goal, no striving, no evolving. Like the enigmatic Chinaman one is rapt by the everchanging spectacle of passing phenomena. This is the sublime, the a-moral state of the artist, he who lives only in the moment, the visionary moment of utter, far-reaching lucidity. Such clear, icy sanity that it seems like madness. --(Henry Miller)

Why does the word 'reality' always have such a sinister, gray, fatalistic ring? It is the realists - that is to say, the death-eaters - who are responsible. But the men who are thoroughly wide-awake and completely alive are in reality, and for these reality has always been close to ecstasy. --(Henry Miller)

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. --(Henry Miller)

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. - (Anais Nin)

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person. --(Anais Nin)

I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy. --(Anais Nin)

Electric flesh-arrows... traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm.--(Anais Nin)

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings. --(Anais Nin)

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman. --(Anais Nin)

I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I donâ€™t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I donâ€™t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding. --(Anais Nin)

I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic -- in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself. --(Anais Nin)

I'm of the mind that we can always fuck indoors; its the semi-public sexual excitement that makes things interesting. --(KR SilkenVoice)

Good sex is artful and intuitive. Great sex is artful, intuitive, and informed by communication and observation. Often, it is what our partner doesn't say that is most telling. --(KR SilkenVoice)

I am a person of conscience. And while I have few morals in the sense most people do, I am conscious that others have them, and I prefer not to lead them astray... My values are very simple and I live in harmony with them: I do what makes me happy. And I try not to do what will make me unhappy. --(KR SilkenVoice)

I am sapiosexual. I think geeks and nerds are sexy--I often want to rub my clit against their minds. --(KR SilkenVoice)

Intimacy is best served spontaneously. --(KR Silkenvoice)

Words, phrases, syllables, stars that turn around a fized center. Two bodies, many beings that meet in a word. the paper is covered with indelible letters that no one spoke, that no one dictated, that have fallen there and ignite and burn and go out. This is how poetry exists; how love exists. --(Octavio Paz)

Even in the midst of our vulgar civilization we, if lacking God, have at least the cosmic elements. These great essences have a singular value for that psychic-sensuous contemplation which is the secret of lasting happiness. --A Philosophy of Solitude, p7 (John Cowper Powys)

Shan is a sudden mystical experience closely associated with everyday life, regarding it as a blessed gift, and enjoying every moment of it. I would call it gratitude for living, a form of Oriental existentialism. There is a sense of the mystery of the mere act of living. A Shan monk enjoys the humble chores. €�It is a miracle I am drawing water from a well! All life and all living are miracles. --From Pagan to Christian, p170 (Yutang Lin)

The purpose of our lives is to be happy. --(The 14th Dalai Lama)

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.--(The 14th Dalai Lama)

The art of contentment is the recognition that the most satisfying and the most dependably refreshing experiences of life lie not in great things but in little. The rarity of happiness among those who achieved much is evidence that achievement is not in itself the assurance of a happy life. The great, like the humble, may have to find their satisfaction in the same plain things. --(Edgar A. Collard)

Often, the true glory of existence is confined to individual consciousness. That'€™s okay. Let us live for the beauty of our own reality. --Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Tom Robbins)

Of the desires some are natural, others vain, and of the natural some are necessary and others merely natural; of the necessary some are necessary for happiness, others for the repose of the body, and others for very life. (Epicurus)

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough. --(Emily Dickinson)

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. (Mark Twain)

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. --(Eden Phillpotts)

Love is like a reservoir of kindness and pleasure, like silos and pools during a siege. --(Yehuda Amichai)

The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live... These are the only hours that are not wasted -- these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. --(Richard Jeffries)
We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure. --(Gerald Brenan)

Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy. --(Thomas Hobbes)

Leisure may prove to be a curse rather than a blessing, unless education teaches a flippant world leisure is not a synonym for entertainment. --(William J. Bogan)

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon. --(Susan Ertz)

Where the Dow replaces the Tao, all life becomes desecrated. --(Franck A Little)

Amusement...the happiness of those who cannot think. --(Alexander Pope)

So little does life, in its larger, simpler aspects interest usâ€¦ that in order to titillate our jaded senses, the very arts of our time have to crack their whips â€¦and skin themselves alive for our delight. --A Philosophy of Solitude, p46 (John Cowper Powys)

I find nothing in fables more astonishing than my experience in every hour. One moment of a man's life is a fact so stupendous as to take the luster out of fiction. --(Emerson)

You wake up in the morning, and lo! Your purse is magically filled with 24 hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life. It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. --(Arnold Bennett)

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. --(Stephen Vincent Benet)

From the philosopher's viewpoint almost all the activities of men appear to me as vain and useless. --(Descartes)

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness. He alone lives, while other people, slaves of ceremony, let life slip past them in a kind of dream. --(Virginia Woolf)

The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. --(Peter Matthiessen)

American Indian lore speaks of our existence as a threefold miracle: â€œthat things exist at all, that life came out of things, and finally, that life became conscious of itself.â€� â€¦ We take these three amazing facts of our existence for granted. We become desensitized and behave as if these perpetual miracles were unimportant in the conduct of our daily lives.
--(Duane Elgin)

To live more consciously means to be more consciously aware, moment by moment, that we are present in all that we do.
--(Duane Elgin)

We teach our children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all men, is now a rare gift. --(Abraham Joshua Herschel)

Thinking is learning all over again to see, to be attentive, to focus consciousness; it is turning every idea and every image into a privileged moment. What justifies thought is its extreme consciousness. --(Camus)

Most of one's life. . . is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking. --(Aldous Huxley)

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. --(E.B. White)

When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough. When you have realized understanding, even one word is too much. --(Fen-Yang)

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. --(Jean Arp)

In us or through us the Primal Mind will have contemplated and enjoyed its own works and will continue to do so as long as human life endures on this planet --(John Burroughs)

The wonder to me is that Man is not even more astounded and dumbfounded than he appears to be each hour of his presence here; that he is not more withdrawn from his so called necessities than he really is, in order to sit beneath a tree, Buddha fashion, and gaze in wonder and astonishment upon the wholly inexplicable world about him.
--(Theodore Dreiser)

I must tell you that I should really like to think there is something wrong with me. Because, if there isn't, then there is something wrong with the world itself - and that is much more frightening. --(T.S. Eliot, Letters)

Hume argued acquisitiveness was one of the most basic drives. The true statesman must recognize this fact. Since most people were governed mainly by ambition and avarice, these vices should be imaginatively channeled to work toward the public good. Such passions could be controlled only by other passions; to expect virtue to reign was hopelessly naive. (David Shi)

What can you say about profit and fame to a solitary and untroubled mountain monk. Weeds of delusion don't grow in the mind where flowers of wisdom bloom. --(Stonehouse)

I'm erecting a barrier of simplicity between myself and the world. --(Andre Gide)

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. --(Einstein)

My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements... but to be consistent with the truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment. --(Tolstoy)

We who revel in nature's diversity... tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction. --(Stephen Jay Gould)

It is only logical that the pauperization of soul and the soul of society coincide with the pauperization of the environment. One is the cause and reflection of the other. --(Paolo Soleri)

When I hear somebody say 'Life is hard', I am always tempted to ask 'Compared to what?' --(Sydney J. Harris)

This weblog is an attempt at giving voice to the sensual immediacy of everyday life.
*Note: All content of this weblog--except where noted--is original, and copyright is held by me.*
(c) Kayar Silkenvoice, 2005 - 2009